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Feb 15, 2015

President's Day in the Swamp

“Do more good than harm.”

That’s what colleague (actually he was quite a few years older than me) told everyone at a group gathering just before he left. There was a tinge of self righteousness in what he said, but it was also about the closest you’d ever hear him admit to any regret. He was a man of action and strong opinions who loved to play Devil’s Advocate ... to the chagrin of quite a few.

Had Nixon not saved the swamp,it would have been swallowed upby a metropolis springing up aroundthe Miami-Dade Jetport instead

Funny how people leave and you never hear from them again.

But for some reason those words with me always stuck.

That brings us to President’s Day.

I’m old enough to remember when Washington’s Day and Lincoln’s Day were separate holidays. Then at some point they got combined into a single day to commemorate the Presidential office and all those that served from 1 to 44.

Diagram from a Nixon-era study that helped save the swamp

Who is my favorite president?

For me it's Richard Nixon without a pause.

What hydrologist can resist picking a president who made water gates, or was it Watergate, a household term. Or that he has the same birthday as Elvis, American icon and singer/songwriter behind the meteorologic masterpiece Cold Kentucky Rain. But most of all there's the fact that he single-handedly saved the swamp. Well, maybe that's stretching it, but he was the president when the political wheels went in motion to create Big Cypress Nat'l Preserve.